THE Tembari Children's Care (TCC) Inc is a day care facility at ATS Oro Settlement, 7-Mile, outside of Port Moresby, PNG. To date, it takes care of more than 200 former street children - orphans, abandoned and the unfortunate - by serving them meals twice a day, and providing them early education. Assistance - food and money - is sent by supporters who find merit in the services we provide to these children. At The Center, they are family. For all of these, we need support that is sustainable.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Lae Biscuits donates flour and the Kiwi guy offers to deliver it to The Center

By ALFREDO P HERNANDEZA Friend of Tembari Children

IMMEDIATELY after Fabian Chow, branch manager of Lae Biscuits at Gerehu, Port Moresby, told me on the phone last Friday that he was going to donate to Tembari children two pallets of whole meal flour – that is 40 bags of 25kg flour – I knew I had a problem.

And the problem was how to bring the goods weighing one ton from Lae Biscuits’ warehouse at Gerehu to The Center at ATS Oro Settlement at Seven-Mile, outside of Port Moresby.

Hauling them in my car – an old Mazda 323 station wagon – is out of the question. However, in most of the donations that were to be picked up, I used my car.

But not this time and not at Gerehu. Days before the last Holy Week, I had the bad luck of being held up around that place when my car broke down after picking up frozen meat donation from Papua Niugini Freezers, which is just a neighbor of Lae Biscuits’.

Mr Chow told me that his company normally donates substantial volume of flour to children facilities like the Tembari Children Care (TCC), a day care and orphanage.

But there’s a catch, and this triggered the problem: I have to pick it up from Lae Biscuits’ warehouse within seven days, or else I forfeit the goods.

So I really have to show up at Lae Biscuits and pick up the donation as soon as possible. But how?

On Saturday morning just before proceeding to The Center for my usual weekend cooking for the Tembari children, I had a chance to chat with Trevor Lyall, the plumbing supervisor of New Zealand-based Canam Constructions, which is constructing two high-rise hotel suite buildings for Holiday Inn.

Trevor happens to be a work colleague of New Zealand-based Filipino construction engineer Joe Buenaventura, who is the project manager of these two high-rise projects.

Joe is a new friend of mine, who is also helping The Center, and that day, he asked me to drop by his work site for a little chat about something important before I proceeded to the settlement.

A Kiwi, who has been here in Port Moresby since the hotel project began this year, Trevor said he had been in the Philippines during his younger days and almost married a Filipino girl, a teacher from Cebu province.

But nothing happened with their engagement even after what he described as “very good relationships with the girl and her family”.

Anyway, Trevor now in his 50s, asked me what I was doing at Seven Mile with all the stuff in my car (donated items like five cartons cordial drink, five containers of purified water, two bags of rice and other stuffs) and I told him about my involvement with the Tembari children, like helping them find donors of foodstuff, money and many more.

“In fact,” I told him, “there’s this one-ton flour donation which has been giving me a headache due to its sheer volume, something I would not be able to deliver to The Center on my own.”

“I can help you with that one,” Trevor casually said, while working on a new door at their makeshift worksite office.

“Let me know when you want the stuff picked up ... I am available this coming week,” he said as he pointed his finger to a white, mini open bed pick-up truck parked just next to where we were chatting.

“That could carry two pallets of your flour.”

“Oh thanks a lot, Lord,” I shouted inside my head, as I thanked Trevor for his offer.

We set the pick-up on Tuesday.

Learning about it, Joe said the Kiwi guy has a soft spot for Filipinos, adding that he has several Filipino friends back in New Zealand where Canam Construction is based.

“I’m not surprised that he offered you some help,” Joe said.

The truth is that while driving on my way to the Holiday Inn worksite to meet my friend Engr Joe Buenaventura, I kept on praying for help to find somebody who could pick up the flour for me.

That prayer was answered in a matter of 30 minutes.

YOU MAY be wondering how Lae biscuits’ general manager Fabian Chow happened to donate a big quantity of flour.

I mentioned to Tee Jay Khoo, a work colleague at The National newspaper where I work, that the Tembari children would also need flour to supplement their monthly rice supply.

I even asked him to donate at least a bag of 10kg a fortnight, which I thought would be enough for the children’s needs. It would be cooked by our volunteer mothers using some local recipes for the kiddos’ noon snacks.

THE BLOGGER

ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ, A Friend of Tembari Children. Blogger APH came to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, in 1993 to join The National newspaper as one of its pioneering journalists. Working as Executive Sub Editor, he has remained with the daily, now the country’s No. 1 newspaper, up to these days. He has been a journalist since his university days in Manila back in the late 60s. APH’s involvement with the Tembari children began in January 2010 after he discovered them at a Christmas party for the city’s 500 unfortunate children held at the Botanical Garden in Port Moresby. That day, he was chasing a story for The National, which happened to be that of the unfortunate children in the city. His self-appointed job for Tembari children composed of orphaned, abandoned, neglected and unfortunate children is to look for people and groups who could provide them food, money, health services and facilities necessary to create positive changes in their lives. This job is difficult, but what the heck …!

(Our sponsored Saturday lunch for the 200 Tembari kids costs only K250.00 per sponsor (we usually have two), which covers a special meat (fish or chicken) dish, veggies, steamed rice and cordial drink. The Saturday lunch needs at least two sponsors. Some had given more, allowing us to give the kids a generous heap of the day’s lunch. A rare bonus to the sponsors, along with the bricks they earn each time, is that I personally cook the dish, giving it a personal touch. And as they earn a brick, each of our benefactors also earn a passage into the heart of the Tembari kids, which is also a prepaid ticket to Heaven.)